Nkosi, Lewis (1936–2010)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Steibel
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Working Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
African Black ◽  
The Usa

Lewis Nkosi is increasingly recognized as one of South Africa’s foremost literary critics, and also as an iconoclastic writer of novels and plays. His years as an exile during the apartheid era meant, however, that his reputation within South Africa was for some time less secure than it was abroad. Born in Chesterville, a black Durban township, Nkosi came from a female-headed, working-class family. He was mission-schooled in Eshowe and then embarked on a career that began with a short but important journalistic stint at Drum magazine. To take up a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard in 1961, Nkosi left South Africa on a one-way exit permit. For the rest of his life he lived variously in England, Zambia, Poland, the USA and Switzerland, following a writing and academic career. Nkosi’s style is a distinctive one, at odds with much of the naturalist writing that characterized South African black ‘protest’ fiction of the apartheid years. Influenced by the writings of Faulkner, Kafka and Joyce, Nkosi’s style is modernist, suggestive and symbolic. His loyalty to form, and to the stringent demands of a modernist perception of art, is evident in his critical essays, gathered into three collections: Home and Exile (1965), The Transplanted Heart: essays on South Africa (1975), and Tasks and Masks: themes and styles of African literature (1981).

South African Black Trade Unions as an Emerging Working-Class Movement

1989 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony W. Marx
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Manufacturing Sector ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Labour Unions ◽  
Industrial Manufacturing ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
African Black ◽  
New Phase

The Recent resumption of popular protest signals a new phase in South Africa's internal opposition, characterised notably by the rising political engagement of black labour unions and their federations. Membership in these unions has reached over a million workers, reflecting the dramatic expansion of South Africa's industrial manufacturing sector in the last 20 years. With severe restrictions placed on the leading national and local political organisations since 1985, the unions have developed beyond their initially narrow concerns for their members into the forefront of opposition to established economic and political order. As a result, class consciousness and working-class organisation have increasingly been combined with, and taken precedence over, previous conceptions of opposition based on racial and national identity. This development has exacerbated both remaining ideological divisions and pressures for united action within the union movement.

scholarly journals The competitive status of the South African Wheat Industry

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Van der Merwe ◽  
Philippus Cloete ◽  
Herman Van Schalkwyk
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
South African ◽  
Wheat Flour ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
The South ◽  
Wheat Market ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Trade Partners

This article investigates the competitiveness of the South African wheat industry and compares it to its major trade partners. Since 1997, the wheat-to-bread value chain has been characterised by concentration of ownership and regulation. This led to concerns that the local wheat market is losing international competitiveness. The competitive status of the wheat industry, and its sub-sectors, is determined through the estimation of the relative trade advantage (RTA). The results revealed declining competitiveness of local wheat producers. Compared to the major global wheat producers, such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany and the USA, South Africa’s unprocessed wheat industry is uncompetitive. At the same time, South Africa has a competitive advantage in semi-processed wheat, especially wheat flour. The institutional environment enables the importation of raw wheat at lower prices and exports processed wheat flour competitively to the rest of Africa.

scholarly journals Die Afrikaanse prosa, 1918 - 1926: brandpunt van die geboorte van ’n nuwe bewussyn

Literator ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. John
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Power ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Massive Intervention ◽  
The Way

This study looks at a selection of Afrikaans prose texts from the period 1918 to 1926 in an attempt to establish a relation between the rapid industrialisation which South Africa was being subjected to and the literature produced during this time. Georg Lukács’ argument that "nature is a social category" is used to show that a preoccupation with certain desires and emotions with which these texts are marked is an indication that a massive intervention into ‘nature’, in the form of the emotional lives of especially white Afrikaans workers, was either on the way or being proposed through the medium of literature during this time. This intervention is seen as part of an attempt by the white Afrikaans ruling class to draw Afrikaans workers into its fold in its struggle for political power. A contiguous concern of the study is to propose this kind of approach as a basis for the study of South African literature as a whole.

A Case for a Transforming Christology in South Africa

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 310-326
Author(s):  
Jakobus (Koos) M. Vorster
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Lost In Translation

Abstract In the South African discourse on the political relevance of Jesus Christ, a vast array of conceptions of Jesus emerged over the years of the struggle, the liberation, the quest for spirituality and the theology of reconstruction. This discourse has taken place within the framework of the two broad historical movements of a “high” and a “low” Christology. In a recent thought provoking and informative article Mouton & Smit investigated four of the dominant discourses on Jesus in contemporary South Africa.1 They surveyed the discussions of Jesus in the popular news and newspaper debates, academic circles and scholarship, the worship and spirituality of congregations and believers, and public opinion about social and political life. After reviewing a huge corpus of South African literature on concepts of Jesus they ask the question whether Jesus was lost in translation in the South Africa of recent times. This article is an attempt to take the argument further. First of all, the investigation will provide another outline of the Christologies in the recent South African discourse within the broad framework of a “high” and a “low” Christology. The concepts under consideration are the spiritual Jesus, the political Jesus and the historical Jesus. Then a case will be made for the transforming Jesus of the Kingdom of God as a corrective on the Christologies of Apartheid, the liberation struggle and the modern-day post-modern projections of the historical Jesus.

‘Burn it down!’: Materialising intersectional solidarities in the architecture of the South African Embassy during the London Poll Tax Riot, March 1990

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Brown
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Working Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Metropolitan Police ◽  
Trafalgar Square ◽  
Poll Tax

This paper offers a new way of conceptualising how intersectional solidarities are actualised. It recounts and theorises an outbreak of radical internationalism, when working class struggles in Britain and South Africa were unexpectedly linked. It examines how intersectional solidarity was materialised through a process of coming together against the architectural fabric of the South African Embassy and considers the interwoven temporalities that enabled this action to occur. On 31 March 1990, nearly a quarter of a million people demonstrated in London against the Poll Tax that was due to take effect in England and Wales the following day. On the day, the Metropolitan Police lost control of an already enraged crowd and provoked a large scale riot that engulfed the West End of London for several hours. In the midst of the riot, during a short retreat by the police, protesters took the opportunity to attack the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square – many windows were broken and an attempt was made to set the building alight. Drawing on interviews with former anti-apartheid protesters who were present on that day (and who had concluded a four-year long Non-Stop Picket of the embassy a month earlier), this paper explores and analyses their memories of that unexpected moment when their previously symbolic call to ‘burn it down’ was (almost) materialised. In doing so, it contributes new ways of conceptualising the spatiality and temporality of intersectional solidarity.

Nicholas Bhengu — The Impact of an African Pentecostal on South African Society

Exchange ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 337-348
Author(s):  
Anthony Balcomb
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
African Society ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
South African Society ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
African Black ◽  
Significant Case ◽  
The Impact

AbstractNicholas Bhekinkosi Bhengu was founder and leader of the Back to God Crusade in South Africa. This movement started in the mid-1950s and became affiliated with the Assemblies of God in South Africa. But Bhengu's influence went far beyond the confines of the movement he started. His revivals impacted South African society in a profound way and he became internationally recognized as a powerful force for change in South Africa. Controversially, however, he did not enter into the political arena as such, even though he was at one stage of his life a member of the Communist Party of South Africa and even later on in his career continued to affirm the policies of this party. Though apparently apolitical his message had profound political consequences. For example he did much to promote the self-confidence and dignity of his people (despite the dehumanising influences of apartheid which he openly denounced), he insisted on reconciliation between the so-called 'red' people and the so-called 'school' people amongst South African black Africans, and he politely but veryfirmly rejected the standards imposed by white society on blacks. There were also very specific reasons — both theological, philosophical, and pragmatic — why he chose not to become a political activist. His is therefore a very significant case study of the socio-political influences of a ministry that was not overtly political.

Is the Multiracial Congregation an Answer to the Problem of Race? Comparative Perspectives from South Africa and the USA

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gladys Ganiel
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Racial Reconciliation ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Multiracial Congregations ◽  
The Usa ◽  
American Research ◽  
Cross National

AbstractThis paper uses a comparative perspective to analyze how multiracial congregations may contribute to racial reconciliation in South Africa. Drawing on the large-scale study of multiracial congregations in the USA by Emerson et al., it examines how they help transform antagonistic identities and make religious contributions to wider reconciliation processes. It compares the American research to an ethnographic study of a congregation in Cape Town, identifying cross-national patterns and South African distinctives, such as discourses about restitution, AIDS, inequality and women. The extent that multiracial congregations can contribute to reconciliation in South Africa is linked to the content of their worship and discourses, but especially to their ability to dismantle racially aligned power structures.

scholarly journals The Position of South African Children's and Youth Literature in Librarian Training in South Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 106-118
Author(s):  
Genevieve Hart
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
South African ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Course Content ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Information Association ◽  
Youth Literature

A survey of 16 South African library schools was undertaken to identify children's literature courses. Eighteen courses were found at eight institutions. The lecturers responsible were then interviewed - giving details of course content, resources available and their perceptions of their challenges. The courses are clearly under threat and very little emphasis is placed on South African literature. The intervention of the Library and Information Association of South Africa and library organisations is called for.

scholarly journals “A Sense of an Absent Future.” Pervading Post-apartheid South African Literature: Re-conceptualisations of Temporality in André Brink’s Transitional Writings

Werkwinkel ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 37-58
Author(s):  
Paulina Grzęda
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Global South ◽  
The Other ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
The Future ◽  
South African Literature

AbstractNumerous commentators have recently indicated a prevailing sense among South africans of a historical repetition, a pervasive sentiment that the country has failed to shake off the legacy of apartheid, which extends into the present, and possibly also the future. 1 Such an observation has led South African psychologist, derek Hook, to conclude that in order to adequately address the post-apartheid reality and allow the process of working through trauma, there is a need to abandon the linear Judeo-Christian model of time derived from the Enlightenment. Instead, Hook advocates to start thinking of post-apartheid South Africa not as a socio-economically or racially stratified society, but rather as a country of unsynchronized, split, often overlapping temporalities. Thus, he offers to perceive of ‘chaffing temporalities’ of the contemporary predicament. Resende and Thies, on the other hand, call for a need for a reconceptualised approach to temporality not only when dealing with heavily traumatized postcolonial countries such as South Africa, but more generally when addressing the geopolitics of all the countries of the so-called ‘Global South.’ My paper will discuss the manner in which reconceptualised postcolonial temporality has been addressed by South African transitional writings by André Brink. I will argue that, although Brink’s magical realist novels of the 1990s imaginatively engage with ‘the chaffing temporalities’ of the post-apartheid predicament, their refusal to project any viable visions of the country’s future might ultimately problematise the thorough embrace of Hook’s ‘ethics of temporality.’

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